


burn your bridges down.

by sleepyempress



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Other, POV Second Person, gender neutral runner five, zrs2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:49:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3184391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepyempress/pseuds/sleepyempress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Promise me, though,” you say, looking him directly in the eyes. “You can’t put me before other people. I’m just one person. I’m not important.”</p>
<p>Spoilers for S2M26 and S2M27. Written for Iron Zombies January 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	burn your bridges down.

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by http://tinypic.com/usermedia.php?uo=adkBqYNLltt0nBeeuqqLEYh4l5k2TGxc#.VLnUzmTF9kw

The sun is well on its way to setting by the time you’ve forced all the raiders out of town, and in the summer, that’s late. Every speck of dust within the walls seems to have been kicked up and still hangs hazy in the air. You’re a bit scraped up, tired, sweaty, knees dirty and bruised after sneaking out to free the raider’s horses, but as you kick up the spilled innards of half the township’s pillows (those were _good pillows_ too, dammit), you realize it could be much worse off. 

On your way back from Janine’s farmhouse you see people still cleaning up what they can, calling to each other as they try to figure out what was taken, what was destroyed, what got dropped in some bandit’s frantic escape and is now lying in the neighbor’s flowerbeds. A lot of the flowers got trampled, too, and you find yourself glancing down at them, feeling sad and sheepish and tired, because you know what you have to do next.

And you don’t want to do it.

You pause at the door of the comms shack before knocking, stare at the hand you have balled into a fist, and give a few taps. You can hear brief scuffling inside, then the door creaks open to reveal Sam’s face as his eyes light up.

“Five! I was wondering how you’d been doing after, well....uh...That was awful, wasn’t it? I’m still so--

“We need to talk.” Your voice nearly cracks from disuse and dehydration.

His smile collapses as he quirks an eyebrow. He stands there a moment, unsure of what to say, blinking owlishly at you.

“Inside?” you ask, then clear your throat.

“Sure,” he says, swinging the door wider and motioning you inside. The shack is small and musty as it was the last time you were in here, but you swear the volume of papers and number of things on the floor has at least doubled. You take the beanbag chair after brushing some kind of crumbs off its surface. Sam takes the one good office chair and spins himself to face you.

“So.....what do you want to talk about?” He’s so nonchalant that for moment you can forget you spent the day watching a bunch of strangers desecrate your home.

“What happened today.” You can tell this is not what he wanted to talk about.

“Speaking of which, how’s Janine?”

“Fine. Shaken, but fine.” 

(The moment things had settled down, you’d gone to the farmhouse, made tea for Maxine and Janine while talked in the living room. Janine had insisted she was fine, thank you very much, but she seemed weary in a way you’d never seen her before.)

“That’s good.”

“Sam, about what happened today.”

“Did Janine ask you to do this?”

“I’m doing it on my own.” He looks unconvinced, so you add, “I thought you’d rather hear this from me than her.”

Sam slouches against the back of the chair. “Go on, then.”

“About what happened today,” you repeat yourself more for your benefit than his, trying to ground yourself. “You know you shouldn’t have opened the gates.”

“And left you stranded outside with those bandits? Those bandits with guns?”  
“You put the entire township at risk for me. And for Simon, but I don’t think you did it for him.”

Sam smiles weakly, glances around the room in the hopes that a clever joke out of all this will pop out from beneath a pile of papers, then gives up on a response.

“You heard what Simon said. About me. About you.” You fluff your fingers through your hair, searching for words. “Whatever it is we have together, you’re still my operator, and I am _one_ of your runners.”

“And I was trying to keep my runners safe.”

“No, you compromised everyone because of me. You can’t keep doing that. I can’t watch you keep doing it. If....if something happens because you make another decision like that, because of me, I couldn’t live with myself afterwards.” You pause to watch dust flicker in the sunlight of the shack’s tiny window. “Christ, I sound like Janine.”

He smiles a little, and you laugh, shakily for the first time all day.

“Promise me, though,” you say, looking him directly in the eyes. “You can’t put me before other people. I’m just one person. I’m not important.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Promise me, Sam.”

“I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

You hug him, tentatively, briefly, pulling away before either of you can squeeze too tightly. 

“Anything else?” Now he’s casting around for some solution to all this. “D’you want to stay here? Or...?”

You shake your head. “No, I promised I’d go help Jody re-wind all her yarn. Can you believe what they did?”  
“I know,” Sam says, in exaggerated outrage, “Absolutely dreadful.”

You smile, just a little.

* * *

It’s the middle of the day. It’s raining. Your hair and clothes and wet grass are sticking to your skin.  You’re shaking, bone-tired, terrified. The bloody kitchen knife is still in your hand.

You’re surrounded.  Sam’s increasingly desperate voice is still looping through your brain. Maxine is safe. There’s too many other things happening for you to process, but even as Van Ark tells you to give up, even as you crumple onto the wet grass like a puppet with cut strings, a singular calm comes over you.

You, in the scheme of the multitudes of people alive right now, are finally, blessedly, unimportant.

Sam Yao has listened to you, and he has made the right decision.  


End file.
